MakerBot Industries

It’s going to be a big weekend for everyone attending Maker Faire Bay Area. Here are a few quick ideas for what you could make to be fully prepared for the festivities.

Card holder by eM5

Business Card Holder with Top by eM5

I saw one of these on Annelise’s desk the other day, and I have to have one. If you get a card from me at MakerFaire, it’ll be from one of these suckers!

But here’s why you should have one for MakerFaire. Trading cards! Shawn  Wallace at Make Magazine has designed these awesome 3D printer trading cards for this weekend. There’s no word on whether there will be actual cards – looks like these are just designs right now – but in case some enterprising person turns these into cards, you’ll be prepared with your card holder!

Mustache and Monocle by chefmaki

Disguise!

Are you supposed to come into the office on Saturday, but you’re planning to sneak over to Maker Faire instead? You need this Mustache and Monocle by chefmaki, just in case your boss shows up. Also, if I see you walking around Maker Faire with this thing, I will feature you on the blog, no questions asked.

Whistle by madkite

A Whistle, either this one by Zaggo, or this slightly modified one above by madkite. If you’re bringing your kids to Maker Faire, and if they have a tendency to run off, you can use your whistle to get their attention. Or perhaps you can use it to referee some robot basketball. These are just ideas; a whistle is always useful.

Nepenthesis by Ecken

A beautiful Nepentheses Planter by Ecken. One thing I want to do at Maker Faire if I get the chance is visit some of the gardening booths. I like the idea of making these Guerilla Garden bombs full of wildflower seeds and throwing them around my neighborhood. Maybe you could leave the planter at home, but it would be a great home for some of the flora you might pick up over the weekend.

Trebuchet by jam4ar

Trebuchet

When does one need a reason to make a trebuchet? Make this and launch things; at Maker Faire. Case closed. Here’s one from jam4ar.

Anyone who has ever used Apple earbuds knows that they look nice and feel terrible. Honestly it seems like those earbuds are made for robots. I’m going to go test a pair on R. Maker in a minute.

If you’re not a robot, Thingiverse user and industrial designer J.C. Karich has solved this problem very elegantly. An adapter for Apple earbuds to work as over-ear headphones.

There are two awesome things here.

1. If you want to use your in-ear headphones, you still can. There’s nothing permanent here.

2. Because you’re making these on your MakerBot, you can adjust the strap around your head to be the exact right size by printing more or fewer parts. Or, I suspect, since the curve of each section is constant, you could slice one piece at any point, as long as the angle of your cut is right.

This is a Work-in-Progress on Thingiverse, but here’s more of J.C. Karich’s work. I particularly like the G.I.P.S., a 3D-printed global positioning system which gives you an indirect path toward your destination based on different kinds of “intuition”. A perfect tool for the wanderer, and it looks like a rock that you might pick up on a stroll through the woods.

On his blog my plastic future, Gregg Wygonik lays out why Bonzai 3D (B3D) is a good tool for modeling for your MakerBot, and maybe better than SketchUp Pro. Gregg says he wanted to find an alternative, in case SketchUp goes through some changes after Trimble takes it over from Google.

Sketch Up Pro and B3D run about the same in terms of price (just under $500 for both). However, he says his files from SketchUp occasionally have some problems when you try to slice them in ReplicatorG. No such problems in B3D:

Half the time I would have to rework parts I made in SketchUp that had holes or other simple design bits due to errors with slicing in RepG; no such issue with the many things I threw at it from B3D. Interestingly B3D has the ability to “diagnose” various potential problems when you export a STL file, but even with it reporting issues with a few of my objects, I had no problems with slicing/printing.

Here’s Gregg’s Pro/Con list for Bonzai 3D.

Things I liked:

• ability to draw lines and primitives as walls (think: no need to draw an extruded hexagon followed by another one a little smaller and push/pull to remove the middle, just draw an extruded hexagon with a set wall size and done!);
• some pretty sweet additions to regular booleans (slicing, object and surface splitting);
• NURBS with some really cool blending tools, in a much more approachable interface than Blender;
• 4-up “old school” view (top, left, right, perspective all at once);
• helix creation (screw tops!!);
• rounded or faceted edges with myriad settings;
• right-click on any tool and set a keyboard shortcut;
• and my new favorite: thicken, which takes any non-solid and turns it into a solid of a specified width

Things I didn’t like:

• some features require the setting of custom workplanes while some don’t and you don’t know until it throws an error dialog (workplanes are all new to me, but I like overall);
• inconsistent workplane handling (“lock workplane” sometimes doesn’t lock, and you have to use “save custom workplane”);
• adding dimensions to a part is hit-or-miss whether or not it will measure between the points you click or the entire edge you’re touching, while “measure distance” works perfect but doesn’t leave the dimensions on screen;
• too much reliance on hovering to open up tool groups and additional options (small gripe)

More here.

TheNewHobbyist's Man Cave, the home of Thing-O-Matic #3804

If you enjoyed that delightful scone cutter video a little while back from TheNewHobbyist, whose work we’ve also featured here, here, here, and here, perhaps you’d like to see where this Thingiverse genius does his work. Looks like a happy home for a MakerBot, and this picture really gives a feel for the room. Chris seems to MakerBot by lamplight.

I’ll share these in the mornings now (that’s New York Time!), just as long as you all keep sharing them with me.

If you will be volunteering for MakerBot as a booth volunteer this weekend, or if you are a MakerBot Operator or Thingiverse Maker, we invite you to join us Friday evening, after setup is done and before the festivities begin on Saturday, for a get together at our booth. Come and enjoy! Please be sure to let us know you’re joining us by registering here.

Turning kids’ silly drawings into physical toys. What a beautiful idea!

Child's Own Studios turns children's drawings into toys

via i09

If you are a mover, a shaker, and a Maker, let us stamp your passport! We’ll have our passport stamps at Maker Faire this weekend, including a special edition Robot Petting Zoo stamp. If you don’t have your passport yet, you can grab one from Adafruit. Collect stamps, prove your cred.

It’s about to get really Maker Faire-ish on this blog! The MakerBot team is gearing up for our trip to San Mateo this week, where we will be throwing down some awesome with Makers from around the globe. Whoa-I-can’t-wait-why-isn’t-it-Saturday-yet?

If you’re going to be a part of Maker Faire this weekend, please stop by and say hello to us. But be prepared for MakerBot staff to be super interested in you and what you like to make.

Lots more info to come, but here are our Top Five Makers this year that we can’t wait to visit. Notice: this list is subject to change before the day’s out.

Cory Soto’s Dalek — building a “Dalek Mutant Vehicle…on a Yamaha G9 gas engine”. He’s been documenting his progress here.

Christian Ristow’s Face Forward — oh come on you have to be kidding me! A 12-foot tall robotic human face controlled by a bunch of joysticks. “Members of the public may operate the levers and play their part in the orchestration of an ongoing “river” of facial expressions.”

Wearable Computing Fashion Show by Lynne Bruning – “A fashion show that features wearable computing, soft-circuits and eTextiles from multiple designers, innovators and makers.” What more can I say?

Andrew Kaye’s 8x8x8 LED Cube — MORE LEDs!!!!! Filling a giant box with 512 LEDs is one of the best things one person can do for another person. Awesome.

Evil Mad Scientist’s High Tech Pumpkins – electronic, robotic pumpkins this Halloween. This is the world we want to live in. Evil Mad Scientist is going to show us how.

From John:

Where John MakerBots, etc.

Check out this nice array of machines. On his blog, John writes that the Prusa Mendel (left) and the Tantillus (right) are both using parts made with his Thing-O-Matic. That’s a family photo if I’ve ever seen one! Thanks for sharing, John.

Minifig Mechs by wgss

Thingiverse citizen wgss has been absolutely rocking a series of mini Mechs.  There’s so much to appreciate about these designs.  Not only are these scaled just right for legos, but each one of wgss’s four mechs is comprised of more than a dozen individual parts.  For Pete’s sake, he’s even modeled bullets separately.  While this means more gluing and assembly, having the parts separated out means everything can be printed without needing to use support structures and each piece could be printed with a different color plastic.

Minifig Mech by wgss

This was an assignment in our school's 3D modelling class. This was modelled in 3D Studio. Thanks to Riley.

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MiniFig Mech 2.0 by wgss

This was an assignment in our school's 3D modelling class. This was modelled in 3D Studio. Thanks to Andrew.

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MiniFig Mech 3.0 by wgss

Another student made mech from our "design a mech" assignment. Ross forgot a spot for the Minifig, so we figured what would be more comfortable than a 60s sofa?

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MiniFig Mech 4.0 by wgss

Another student entry into our school's "design a mech" assignment. I'm told this one was inspired by Metal Slug. There's not a clear seat for the MiniFig, so feel free to make one yourself...

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